yeah, i was under the impression that genetic predisposition doesn't nessercari;y lead to genetic expression. and that environmental stuff had a part in sending immune systems haywire....so if your immune system is proneto going wrong, hammering your body with nasty unatural stuff isn't advised....
hence my alchohol/stress/ viral ifection ideas.... mind you my tea total aunt still has hashi's :) and her tea total father did too.....
I have to disagree with redhead (sorry!) I've read many articles where "stress" can be a trigger in the onset of hashis or any of the body's autoimmune responses. I believe that I was (am) genetically predisposed to it, but in my case, a handful of years of high-end stress provided the trigger that set it off. In my case my body's antibodies chose to attack my thyroid gland. Hashis is an autoimmune disease - its did not "begin" with my thyroid. I read more and more about the mind/body connection - although I am sure I cannot "think" or meditate away my disease...
http://www.thyroid-info.com/articles/shamesautoimm.htm
http://www.aarda.org/infocus_article.php?ID=31
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18190880
Alcohol is going to affect many organs and tissues in the body regardless of Hashimoto's disease or not. Alcohol DOES inpinge on the T4 to T3 conversion. Heavy drinkers ( more than 2 standard glasses of wine a day for women and 3 for men.) and also alcoholics have major difficulty with their thyroid function.
The other issue is that it is not brought on by stress, lifestyle factors or alcohol. Hashi's is the body seeing that the thyroid is a foreign object and sets out to destroy it.
Hangovers are caused by the body being dehydrated and the kidneys working overtime. In time the body starts to fail at its repair rate and the liver especially suffers.
Memory issues are bad enough with Hashimoto's but adding heavy drinking is only going to mask that, as the short term memory goes in heavy drinking and you won't now which is which. At least in moderate drinking you know when you are having memory problems that are related to Hashi's.
Hangovers are natures way of telling you you are destroying your body, regardless of the T3 low. The reason you find drinking moderately now affects you is that your body got used to the heavy drinking and now it is converting alcohol quicker in your liver. Alcohol is technically a poison which our livers de-tox then re-tox to give you the high. It takes approximately one hour for a drink to not cause damage, but many people drink more than 2 or 3 standard drinks an hour and end up with damage. Over time this is dangerous and once you destroy something in the body you will not get it back.
The thyroid works hard enough in dealing with other factors let alone bringing alcohol into the picture. So of course with thyroid function and/or medication the body is dealing with getting rid of the alcohol through the kidneys, liver etc, it is only going to be working harder at maintaining levels throughout the day. That system can and will fail if excess alcohol is consumed. It is only a temporary issue if occasional excessive drinking happens but in long term drinking it fails permanently with the T4 to T3 conversion.
I enjoy a drink, I have no thyroid and I know that if I do drink heavily and then go to take my thyroxine in the morning, I had better be darned sure that the time frame has allowed the alcohol to leave my body, or it is pointless taking it. (Remembering it takes approx one hour for a drink to leave the body with no alcohol present, so if I drink more than 8 glasses of wine and go to bed say at midnight, my body will still have alcohol at 8am, no driving nor medication should be done) Hence why I no longer drink any more than a 10% alcohol light wine, or more than 2 or 3 glasses. Hard enough to maintain my thyroid levels!
I've read that alcohol suppresses thyroid function and has a negative effect on the whole endocrine system. Here is a link to a medical publication.
http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh21-1/53.pdf
However, I don't believe that Hashis (auto-immune disease that attacks thyroid tissue) is caused by consuming alcohol. But, if you have hashis or low functioning thyroid I think that consuming more than a casual drink now and then would render the thryoid hormone ineffective. (just like drinking is not recommended while taking antibiotic)
My father never had a drink in his life, he had hashi's, I drink moderately, had my college years where I drank a bit much, had hashi's. Don't think it has anything to do with it.